First of all, you people are crazy. When I put out the baseball challenge here asking people to try and beat my all-world lineup (a lineup of current players all from different countries) and my all-world roster (25 players in history from 25 different countries), I didn’t really expect many to do it. It’s so nerdy. I figured that I would get 10 or 20 responses from people with the same obsessive tendencies that I have.

Instead: Hundreds and hundreds of people sent in lineups.

I didn’t see that coming at all — there was something about this idea (thought up by my editor Matt Meyers) that seemed to appeal to intense baseball fans. We’re proud that baseball really is a world game. True, it’s not especially popular in Europe (something that Italian Baseball Superstar Mark Teahen will change) but in Latin America, in Asia, in North America, young baseball players dream of playing in the big leagues, and that’s a very cool part of the sport.

I’ve written all about the all-world lineup construction — I know the original plan was to talk about anyone who beat my team, but in truth the many lineups were so similar (for the most part) that it’s hard to differentiate. What I found interesting was your chosen lineup showed whether you thought catcher or shortstop was more important (do you choose Puerto Rico’s Yadi Molina or Carlos Correa), whether you valued the game’s greatest superstar or the best pitcher on the planet (Mike Trout vs. Clayton Kershaw) and so on.

Several people sent in my exact team with the exception of pitcher — they chose Colombian Jose Quintana and I took Japan’s Masahiro Tanaka. That’s a close one.

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Joe Posnanski writes about sports for a living, particularly baseball. Here, he writes about sports and also Springsteen, Hamilton, Harry Potter, iPads, infomercials, his idolization of Duane Kuiper, his family and magic. He lives in Charlotte with his wife Margo, two daughters Elizabeth and Katie, and their dog Westley. Joe is currently working on a book about Harry Houdini in today's world.

52 Responses to An All-World Lineup

Close! You should have picked Yasmani Grandal as your catcher (and Cuban), over Ruiz and Cespedes. Grandal had 2.8 WAR last year, Cespedes had 2.9, and Ruiz had 0.2. If you go Grandal at catcher, and take Kepler (2.4 WAR in 2016), you’re coming out ahead (though you would be relying on the youngster).

I started doing a team and just got sidetracked…but some names I considered:

SP: I came down to two, Tanaka and Julio Teheran of Colombia. I went with Teheran

Altuve and Votto were easy picks for me as well, but then things get interesting…

I throw out another Cuban, Aledmys Diaz for SS. That’s if you wanted to free up one of those from Puerto Rico for another position. After looking through things, I actually settled on Correa at SS, because I thought my OF was actually a bit thin. So by not taking Diaz, I could take Cespedes for the OF.

I debated C like crazy, and decided to go for broke with the young gun, Gary Sanchez of the DR. By doing this, I realize I eliminate a lot of impact DR players, but was I was just trying to think outside the box.

That’s as far as I got though. As for closer, don’t forgot about South Korea’s Seung-hwan Oh. All he did last season was pick up 19 saves (remember he didn’t start the season as closer) with a WHIP of .916, FIP of 2.13, 11.6 K’s/9 totaling 103 K’s in just 79 2/3 IP. No, he’s not as good, but he’s another quality South Korean player if you want to go a different direction.

Joe’s team with your two changes (Kepler for Choo, Oh for Jansen): 49.9

One more optimization: Since you subbed Oh for Jansen, you can now sub in Simmons for Bogaerts, to increase the overall WAR up to 50.4 – although I would think you would play Simmons at short and move Correa to DH in that setup.

My team was close to Joe’s. I had Grandal at catcher, Ichiro in LF and Paulo Orlando in RF. I thought about not having Ichiro, and instead using Tanaka as a pitcher (I used Quintana). Tanaka and Quintana are very close in war, Orlando and Kepler are also close and both play RF. Frankly I missed Kepler or would have thought more about him. As it was, I wanted Correa at SS and Votto at 1b which meant I could not use Cespedes (I saw either/or situations with Correa at SS and Molina at C, and also with Votto at 1b and Russell Martin at C, and i think Grandal is the only other real option at C). I think Ichiro will have a better year than Choo.

I think so many did this because it was fun and educational.

Joe there is only one way to judge these teams – a column in October 2017 which lists the best team(s) by war!

According to ZIPs projections for 2017, Joe’s team is projected for 39.7 WAR.

Even after making a couple of adjustments for rules I misunderstood (I didn’t realize that you could include an American Player, or that you could take a wild card in lieu of a player who is actually a DH) my team only is projected for 38.

However, looking at it a little more closely, you could take Joe’s team and swap Choo for Kepler and Ruiz for Gomes and Tanaka for Quintana and add another 1.8 WAR, for a total of 41.5. I think that’s the best you could do.

These sorts of things are the perfect way to while away the days in the off-season.

How about a team of players who never appeared in a World Series (no active players; they still have a chance… Banks, Santo, Griffey Jr., Kiner….)? A team consisting entirely of players named Joe (Morgan, DiMaggio, Medwick….)?

I’ll have to look up Leyritz. I couldn’t find a catcher. But yes… All-Prison team. I tried to go with most serious crimes, and all of these are very serious, except Strawberry’s, and I guess Rose’s. There were no other 2B I could find, and CF and RP are crammed full of criminals. I had fun with this one — I only knew about half of these. For example, I did not know that Mel Hall was in prison for 45 years! (For raping two girls.)

Ainge and Hendrickson were basketball players. Hmm. If they were basketball players, I would think Kenny Lofton (ASU!) would’ve been included. I think Dave Winfield was drafted by the NBA, too, wasn’t he?

Good, but… all these guys actually played in the NBA. Well, not Hector. It’s gonna be hard to find a basketball-playing catcher, probably. 🙂 If I went with college players, I’d probably have to go with Gwynn, too, and Boudreau.

Some boring random baseball jottings… Joe hooked me on the WBC at least a little bit and I’m watching Israel-Netherlands right now, playing in Seoul. There must be at least 50 fans in the stadium. The Dutch are the Curacao/Aruba connection and a few stars from Joe’s contest are playing, along with a Van Mil or two. Israel has Sam Fuld, Ike Davis, Jason Marquis, and most of the rest are American minor leaguers, so I guess it’s pretty traditional to be rather loose with the country affiliation? I do see one guy actually from Israel on the roster. Both the Dutch and “Israel” uniforms are snappy. Snappier still were a row of blonde Dutch girls in the crowd (player wives, or fans who flew to Seoul?), and some old guys wearing orange royal garb and crowns.
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Warmed up with the afternoon’s D’Backs-Mexico game. Another recent Joe article subject, Greinke, was pitching. He didn’t seem to care too much about the game, which is probably good… with the focus on pitch counts, I’m guessing pitchers don’t throw more than a handful of spring training innings at full strength. Arizona still has the worst uniforms in baseball, even the modified spring training ones.
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I tried working up a couple of theme teams using just memory, no research. I’m pretty bad at recalling players from memory, so these are not very impressive attempts, and they’re half-hearted, but maybe someone will want to improve them. The themes should be self-explanatory…
…
C Jarrod Saltalamacchia (14)
1B Doug Mientkiewicz (12)
2B Mark Grudzielanek (12)
3B ?
SS Nomar Garciaparra (11)
LF Carl Yastrzemski (11)
CF ?
RF Darryl Strawberry (10)
SP William VanLandingham (13)
SP Noah Snydergaard (11)
SP Fernando Valenzuela (10)
SP Mark Hendrickson (11)
RP Dan Quisenberry (11)
RP Dave DeBusschere (11)
…
C ?
1B Jeff King
2B Max Bishop
3B Ray Knight
SS Jean Segura (Ruy Lopez de Segura)
LF ?
CF Devon White
RF ?
SP Bud Black
SP Don Larsen (Bent Larsen)
SP ?
RP ?
RP ?

Assuming you can’t find a real answer for catcher, I might go with “Deacon” McGuire, who’s got more than 1,600 games there. Then of course there’s Deacon White, which sort of spells “White Bishop” and is pretty good for a bench player in the Hall (800+ games at 3B, 400+ at C, also OF, 1B, and 2B, and even a couple games at SS and P).
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… actually, his pitching career has one of the more interesting lines I’ve seen:

Nice, but… Jose Cruz wants to have a tryout against Carter and Rudi. As do Joe Sewell and Joe Tinker against Jose Reyes. Jose Rijo says ignore his Oakland stats, and focus on his Reds days, but I still don’t know if he beats Niekro. 🙂

Anybody still following this stuff? Paulo Orlando off to a terrible start while Kepler is playing very well. Beltre out injured. Ichiro doing nothing yet. And Tanaka and Quintana both getting shelled, Quintana worse. So my choices do not look good for now. I will just keep telling myself small sample size, small sample size …

And Joe, Please the Court, is there a column on the 25 man all time international roster anywhere in our future? Or when you said it was coming “soon” did that mean “never”? Just kidding. Kind of.